Republished on Wednesday 1st June 2022: We're bringing this review back from the archives following the announcement of June's PlayStation Plus lineup. The original text follows.
For the uninitiated, Naruto is a long running manga series published in the weekly Shounen Jump periodical straight out of the Land of the Rising Sun. Naruto has been steadily published since 1997, and has since become a global phenomenon standing with the greats like Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Hunter x Hunter, et al. Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker is the newest entry in Naruto's long history of video games. Joining a roster of approximately 60 other entries, Shinobi Striker brings much to the table, but does it hang with the rest? We reckon Shinobi Striker solidifies itself in the Naruto series as something quite unique, and something that'll surely be an influence on future titles.
Shinobi Striker takes place chronologically between the events of Naruto Shippuden and Boruto: the Next Generation, and is an open arena fighting game with a strong emphasis on traversal. The game allows you to either create your own avatar or play as a 'master character', returning greats from the series that’s been going for about two decades. You also get to choose your role through many customisation options, and take to the battlefield in either offline or online four-on-four matches to see how you really stack up.
Combat in Shinobi Striker is a wild ride. As your very own ninja you have the ability to run on walls and water, you can jump from wall to wall with wire kunai, and use the environment as a tool in itself. This makes the combat so wild and over the top that it truly feels like a Naruto dream come true. You need to be deliberate, thoughtful, and quick as can be.
Dodging and blocking are paramount, as excess button mashing can lead to combos that leave you wide open to enemy attack. However, the game is seemingly a first of its kind, as it has such a vast array of roles, skills, tools, and weapons, allowing you to tailor your experience almost however you like. You can choose from four key roles: Attack, Range, Defence, and Heal. These feel dramatically different, as they all have different sets of weapons, skills, and ultimate abilities that they can harness. Unfortunately, there are some dumb (if a little fun) glitches that come into play, like clipping into ledges and the like, but hopefully these are fixed with upcoming patches.
The game is considered online at all times, although for solo play there still remains the ability to play 'VR missions'. These are what the game considers its 'story mode' despite the fact it's bereft of any consistent story. However, you can at least get a ton of time out of these missions without ever touching the online modes. The offline modes kept us busy for a number of hours just trying to level up our avatar, unlock new VR Masters (a chosen character from the series that imparts new skills, costumes, and more), and collect new scrolls (this game’s take on loot boxes).
On paper this seems very cut and dry, an everyday affair, but in practice, some potential issues become apparent. The missions have a few key aspects that can be a real drag at times. Cutscenes and dialogue have no option to skip, which can be a massive slog when trying to farm up ryo (in-game currency), and scrolls for new gear. Additionally, quests are delivered one by one, only by talking to non-playable characters scattered all across the relatively small hub area in the Village Hidden in the Leaves. One big issue we ran into was that occasionally — okay, not occasionally, pretty frequently — we had a bug where our next quest giver wouldn't spawn immediately, and we would have to leave the game and reload in in order to progress.
Despite the niggling issues, what sets Shinobi Striker apart from other Naruto games is the sheer amount of customisation that it offers. They're very much for fans of the series, and we spent hours and hours decking out our shinobi to look as edgy as possible. Customisation really seems to be the driving force of the game — it got to a point where we couldn't put down the controller because the compulsion to get more loot was far too strong.
Of course, if you really want to put your fully customised ninja to the test, you can always go up against other players, hitting the game's online matches to see where you stand. Despite some matchmaking quirks that would regularly put our team of level 20-somethings up against a squadron of level 60 players, it's solid fun.
Conclusion
A fast and frenetic adventure, Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker is greater than the sum of its parts. Despite some voice work that feels rather flat and a handful of other minor issues, the game feels genuine in its attempt to recreate the action of Naruto, and forging your own custom character's legacy is bound to be enough to entice fans.
Comments 8
Seems another game that's been released at the wrong time and will be lost among the bigger games coming out, so will wait till next year when patched and cheaper, you do think the developers of these games would use a little common sense and release at a different timw.
Nice review. I wasn't planning on getting it since I don't enjoy multiplayer, but thanks to the offline mode, I'll definitely get it.
well i'm glad it has offline modes so i'll be picking it up but i just couldn't get it day one, i just didn't have the funds
Guess I'll have to check out this Naruto Xenoverse then, eventually.
Meh I was excited about this game until I learned it was mostly multiplayer with "offline" modes.
If I ever grab it it'll be in a few years when it's dirt cheap.
What about the soundtrack though? Naruto had some great tunes, but the previous game didn't use any of the awesome music bums me out.
@NathanUC it's expensive licencing Anime music for games outside of Japan, that's why it took so long for Dragon Ball games to get Cha-La Head Cha-La and why they had to sell the songs as a Anime Music pack for XenoVerse 2 and FigterZ, to cover the cost
7/10 stars?! You've got be kidding me.
The biggest thing they have going for them is customization, but they were lazy. The problem is EVERYTHING is locked to specific classes. I understand the concept of building an effective and well balanced team. I think that's a really cool idea, it's actually something that I was thinking about when I was fantasizing over the perfect naruto game. But the way they did it is too restricting even to things that don't need to be class specific, like ninja tools and weapons. If you're not playing online for whatever reason then you are going to be doing missions virtually by yourself, so why would you restrict players from building a well balanced character? And maybe we just want the aesthetics; for instance, if I wanted a ninja with a tanto and body flicker, I couldn't, so what you're telling me is that Shisui doesn't exist?
At this point I'm going to start listing all the things that would seriously improve the game.
1. Get rid of the restrictions on all ninja weapons and most ninja tools and jutsu. Obviously certain things need to be restricted like only healers have access to healing type jutsu and the healing tag but balancing can be accomplished very easy.
EVERYTHING else should not be restricted. There should also be a separate class possibly only available when playing offline that allows you full access to choose between all learned jutsu. A player should be allowed to choose only ultimate jutsu if they so choose, because it already balances itself out; the player will be basically useless until their ultimate is ready. If a player chooses only ultimate jutsu, it should have a very SLIGHT faster charge speed. (Still assuming that the player only picked ultimates) transformation ultimates should be combine-able and last longer individually and separately and attack or heal ultimates should charge just a very slight bit faster. If a player is smart enough to make this play style feasible, then their skill should be rewarded, not restricted.
2. Have trainable stats. Not all ninja are just as fast as each other, or as strong, or stealthy. Trainable stats should be:
3. Return the combat to ultimate ninja storm 4. Not saying bring back how much chakra you have to cast jutsu, how many substitutions you get, support attacks, or the ability to do your ultimate virtually any time you feel. I'm talking about everything else, just the overall feel and style of combat, you guys had it fine why would you work to do it different when you had a perfectly fine finished product. Besides the terrain and everything I already described, the game should play virtually the same as ultimate ninja storm 4. We are already used to dealing with chaos flying at us from the support attacks, now instead of support attacks we have team mates. There is virtually no difference except we have to play more cautious because a teammate doesn't just pop in, do a jutsu and leave, which is a good thing that we have to think more before just rushing in!
4. Make more maps no pit falls and capture the flag needs to have larger maps and the game mode needs to be revamped. Renamed capture the scroll: 2 rounds, one team is on offense, one team is on defense, each team starts way on their side of the very large field, the offense team has a set amount of time to make it all the way through the forest and capture the defense's scroll and bring it back to their base ONE TIME. The defense can try to intercept them or wait for them at the scroll. When the offense is in possession of the scroll, the defense gets a speed buff to be able to catch up (just like in the show, they always seem to be able to catch up to the person they are tracking somehow lol) This allows speed and stealth the play a decent role on both sides; the faster you are, the harder you will be to catch up to or the faster you will be able to catch up and return your scroll. Stealth will make it harder for the enemy to find you in case your teammates die and you need to stall for them to respawn and catch up to support you. If the offense drops the scroll, it does not teleport to the home base unless it is relatively close and must be carried by the defense with no speed buff back to close enough to their base. This will make it so the offense might not necessarily have to travel all the way to the other side of the map every time the scroll is dropped. Once the round is over offense goes on defense and vice versa. If both teams succeed or both fail then it is a draw, otherwise the team that was successful wins.
5. Give some sort of equivalent to Xenoverse 2's QQ Bang. I like my character to be aesthetically pleasing. I don't want to have to put on weird stuff that doesn't look right or make sense just because it has a very useful effect.
Past no.5, I am not too concerned with, but I already came this far so I might as well finish.
6. Expand the village. Ya'll already know about this. Once again you had a finished product that would have worked perfectly (Nauto broken bond) but you guys were too lazy to put it in.
7. Make NPC's last rank allow them to be customizable. This could some what circumvent the issue described in no.1 if that couldn't be achieved but, playing so long and ranking all the way up with your mentor should grant something way more special than an ugly t-shirt that just has a little symbol to represent the character you got it from. Bring able to treat an NPC as a CaC would be pretty cool considering most of them do not fight in the conventional way that someone of their class would (i.e: kakashi is attack but has kunai, sakura is Healer but fights bare handed, etc.)
8. All clothes and weapons should be sell able regardless if you have more than one. C'mon guys, no one likes clutter..
4-10
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